As you know, I consider the illustrator Kito to be the best. Not in terms of technical skill (although he is certainly very good), but in terms of embodying the philosophy I subscribe to as an illustrator. He is the Eric Johnson of cute. (Meanwhile, Eric Johnson’s webmaster wonders what a site like mine is doing linking to him.) It follows naturally that I would want a copy of his Summer Comic Market artbook Kito no Yorozu, although realistically I don’t have much of a chance of getting it.

Kito (樹人) is a green creature, with the “ki” (樹) in his name meaning a tree. (See 北の樹の木霊, “kita no ki no Kodama”, or Kodama of the North Tree). His mascot character, seen above, is some kind of moe tree whose name, I believe, is Kinoko. The Kodamas of Kamigawa Block should have looked like this.

Of course, no Kito post would be complete without a Toho illustration. This is the cover of Toho Utau Cirno-chan, a karaoke collection of IOSYS Toho fanmusic hits, including, of course, Cirno’s Perfect Math Class.

The song The Sparrow from the album Terra Guitarra: The Mother Night by the American folk guitar band Patchouli (Julie Patchouli, Bruce Hecksel, Willy Crow Mojo). Patchouli just won the 2010 Songwriter Award at the Unvarnished Music Festival in Minnesota.

While I’ve 1CC’d Imperishable Night and Mountain of Faith on Normal, those are the two easiest Toho games. Subterranean Animism is much harder than those. It quickly became apparent that if I was struggling to pass Satori, then Orin would be pretty much impossible.

Fortunately for losers like myself, there’s Easy Mode.

As you can see, Easy Mode makes 1CC-ing Subterranean Animism quite possible. I think I should be able to beat Utsuho in less than a hundred tries now.

Although I must say, this is somewhat difficult for Easy Mode. Phantasmagoria of Flower View, the other Toho game I have that I can’t 1CC on Normal, is pretty effortless to 1CC on Easy Mode, and I 1CC’d both Imperishable Night and Mountain of Faith on Easy Mode in one try. But Subterranean Animism has had me running into the 50-60 attempt range on Easy Mode. Apparently even Easy Mode is harder underground.

Back when they were doing the art for the Magic 2011 Core Set, French fantasy illustrator Aleksi Briclot (of ANEYEONI) fell in love with the girl he was assigned to draw, the super-powerful mythic Primeval Titan. He asked her to marry him, and she said yes. They are married happily to this day, even if she occasionally gets drunk and puts all sorts of strange lands onto the battlefield tapped.

So my allergic reaction is subsiding. The blisters have turned to dry skin that is now peeling off. There’s been some kind of aftershock that caused hives to erupt from my shoulders to my fingertips and across my back, but I’ve been suppressing them with medication.

The problem is that the medication makes me sleepy, and since I’ve been working slightly overtime at work I’ve been going to sleep as soon as I finish my dinner. It’s inconvenient, and it’s kept me from working on much of anything in the evening, but it’s better to be asleep than itching all over.

So I finished the next eight pages of Fairy Ring and was going to post a continuation, but then I decided that I would wait until I had the entire first chapter complete (36 pages total, including the 13 from the first two installments) before posting, so that the post would have a “complete idea” and would be more worth talking about. The target deadline is Sunday, July 25.

So instead, I’m attending the prerelease for the Magic 2011 Core Set, and you get a commemorative Lotus Cobra is Evil.